Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (2 page)

Eight bridesmaids and two pages followed Almina: her cousin, Miss Wombwell, her fiancé’s two younger sisters, Lady Margaret and Lady Victoria Herbert, Lady Kathleen Cuffe, Princess Kathleen Singh and Princess Sophie Singh, Miss Evelyn Jenkins and Miss Davies. All the bridesmaids wore cream silk muslin over white satin skirts trimmed with pale blue ribbons. The large cream straw hats trimmed with silk muslin, feathers and ribbons completed a charming picture. The Hon. Mervyn Herbert and Lord Arthur Hay followed, dressed in Louis XV court costumes of white and silver, with hats to match.

Almina had known her bridegroom for nearly a year and a half. They had never spent any time alone, but had met on half a dozen occasions at social gatherings. It was almost
certainly not enough time for Almina to realise that the frock coat the Earl had been persuaded to wear on his wedding day was quite different from his usual casual style.

As the young couple stood in front of the altar, the massed family and friends behind them represented a glittering cross-section of the great and the powerful, as well as a smattering of the rather suspect. On the right-hand side sat the bridegroom’s family: his stepmother, the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon and his half-brother the Hon. Aubrey Herbert, the Howards, the Earl of Pembroke, the Earls and Countesses of Portsmouth, Bathurst and Cadogan; friends such as Lord Ashburton, Lord de Grey, the Marquess and Marchioness of Bristol. The Duchesses of Marlborough and Devonshire were in attendance, as were Lord and Lady Charteris and the greater part of London Society.

Lord Rosebery, the ex-Prime Minister, was a guest. He had travelled to Windsor Castle just four days previously to give his resignation to the Queen, who then asked Lord Salisbury to form a government. Queen Victoria, who had been a recluse for many years, was not present, but she sent greetings to the young couple. Her connection with the Carnarvons was long-standing: she was godmother to the Earl’s youngest sister.

The bride’s family and friends were rather different. Almina’s French mother, Marie Wombwell, was born Marie Boyer, the daughter of a Parisian banker. It would have been easy to conclude, observing the two, that Almina had inherited her vivacity and style from Marie. Sir George Wombwell, brother of Marie’s late husband, had stepped in to give Almina away. The Wombwells were seated next to many representatives of the most influential and fabulously
wealthy of the newly ennobled mercantile classes. Here were Sir Alfred de Rothschild, Baron and Baroness de Worms, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, Lady de Rothschild, Mr Reuben Sassoon, four other Sassoon cousins, Mr Wertheimer, Mr and Mrs Ephrusi, Baron and Baroness de Hirsch. Both Marie and Sir Alfred had a great many friends in the theatre and the celebrated prima donna, Adelina Patti, now Madame Nicolini was also a guest.

As Almina contemplated her destiny, standing in front of the group of illustrious churchmen who had been drafted in to officiate at her marriage, her hand in that of her new husband’s, she might well have felt overawed or nervous at the thought of married life. Perhaps she caught her mother’s eye and was reminded of just how far she had come. But then again, she must also have been conscious of the fact that with the marriage contract the Earl of Carnarvon had signed with Alfred de Rothschild, she was protected by a level of wealth so stupendous that it could buy respectability, social acceptance and access to one of the grandest and best-connected families in late-Victorian England. Almina went into St Margaret’s the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish banker and his French kept woman, but she emerged, to the strains of Wagner’s bridal march from
Lohengrin
, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. Her transformation was complete.

This remarkable ascent up the social ladder had not been entirely trouble-free. Even Rothschild money couldn’t atone for the fact that Mrs Marie Wombwell – widow of the heavy drinker and reckless gambler, Frederick Wombwell and, more importantly, the long-standing confidante of Sir Alfred – was not received in Society.

Almina’s childhood was spent between Paris and London, her teenage years in 20 Bruton Street, W1, in the heart of Mayfair. There were also occasional visits to the Wombwells in Yorkshire. Sir George and Lady Julia remained very kind to Marie and her children even after her husband died. The address in Mayfair was excellent, but Marie Wombwell’s credentials were not.

She had been a married woman, though estranged from her husband when she met Sir Alfred. Sir Alfred was a leading figure in public life; he had been a director of the Bank of England for twenty years, and was also a bachelor, an aesthete, and a confirmed man about town. He delighted in spending the vast family fortune on a lavish lifestyle that included ‘adoration dinners’, soirées for the pleasure of his gentlemen friends, at which they could meet the leading ladies of the day.

Marie may have been introduced to Sir Alfred by her father, who knew him through connections in the banking world, or by Sir George and Lady Julia, who spent weekends as his guests at Halton House in Buckinghamshire. Alfred and Marie shared a passion for the theatre and the opera and became close friends, and then lovers. Alfred was a generous companion who provided handsomely for Marie and her daughter. Since Alfred was prepared to settle a vast sum of money on her, Almina was a serious contender in the marriage market. But even Marie could surely never in her wildest dreams have imagined that her daughter would make the leap to the heart of the Establishment.

Apparently, this success rather went to Marie’s head. She was quite insistent that the venue for the wedding breakfast should be sufficiently grand to do justice to the occasion,
but this presented considerable problems of etiquette. It was traditional for the celebrations to be given at the bride’s family home, but that was impossible, since her mother was beyond the pale and her father was, for form’s sake, referred to as her godfather. It was Rothschild money that was paying for the magnificent festivities, but they could not be held in a Rothschild house.

Elsie, the 5th Earl’s stepmother and prime mover behind the wedding planning, had been fretting over this conundrum for weeks. As she wrote to the Countess of Portsmouth, the Earl’s devoted aunt, ‘We have a family difficulty. We have neither called upon her [Mrs Wombwell] nor received her, tho’ Almina of course has been with us constantly.’ With great delicacy, Elsie, who had an instinctive sweetness and had taken Almina under her wing, had been making enquiries amongst such family friends as Lord and Lady Stanhope, hoping to secure the use of a neutral but impressive venue for the wedding breakfast. Various houses were offered but not accepted before, in the end, Mr Astor offered the loan of Lansdowne House on the south side of Berkeley Square, and Marie agreed that this would do very well.

So, after the church service, the guests made their way to the Mayfair mansion. It was a stately house, designed by Robert Adam and built in 1763, with many elegant reception rooms. The entrance hall was filled with hydrangeas; then each room was themed with different flowers. As in St Margaret’s, palms and ferns featured prominently in the saloon, where Gottlieb’s celebrated orchestra, which had been brought over from Vienna, was playing the latest fashionable waltzes. Drinks were served in one room, the wedding breakfast, complete with a three-tiered cake, in
another. Mrs Wombwell greeted guests wearing a dark purple dress, while Elsie, the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon, whose rank naturally dictated that she be first in the receiving line, wore a dress of green and pink shot silk.

The wedding gifts to both bride and groom were carefully catalogued and displayed at the party. From Sir Alfred, Almina had received a magnificent emerald necklace and tiara, jewels befitting her new rank, to be worn when entertaining at Highclere or in town. She was given a vast quantity of beautiful things, from crystal vases to gold scent bottles and endless
objets de virtu
. The bridegroom was presented with equally charming bejewelled ornaments and adornments, from rings to cigarette cases.

After all the worries beforehand, the day passed off without a hitch. If there were mutterings at the elevation of Miss Wombwell, they were muted. Mrs Wombwell behaved impeccably and everyone maintained a discreet silence over the part played by Alfred de Rothschild. In fact, the spectacular wedding was judged to have been one of the most successful events of the Season.

Perhaps the real moment of anxiety for Almina came not when she stepped into the church or Lansdowne House, where she was after all surrounded by familiar faces, but when she was driven away from her old life, her girlhood, and began her journey to Highclere. She must have received some words of encouragement from her mother, surely a kiss and a blessing from her father. But now she was embarking on her first steps as a wife, in the company of a virtual stranger who had so far shown no real inclination to get to know her.

Leaving their guests during the afternoon, the newly married couple were driven by Lord Carnarvon’s head coachman, Henry Brickell, across London to Paddington to catch a special train for the country. They were to spend the first part of their honeymoon at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the grandest of the Carnarvon estates. They had both changed their clothes. The Earl shrugged off his long, formal coat at the earliest opportunity and was now wearing his favourite, much-darned blue jacket. Once out of town, he added a straw hat. Almina was wearing a charming pompadour gauze dress, diamonds and a hat by Verrot of Paris.

The train from Paddington was due to arrive at Highclere Station at 6.30 p.m. Lord and Lady Carnarvon alighted and took their seats in an open landau drawn by a pair of bay horses and driven by the under-coachman. A mile later, the carriage turned in to the lodge gates, winding through arching trees and dark rhododendron bushes. As they passed the Temple of Diana above Dunsmere Lake, a gun was fired from the tower of the Castle. Ten minutes later, the landau arrived at the crossroads in the park and the couple got down from the carriage. A processional arch studded with flowers had been set up over the driveway. The horses were unharnessed by heads of departments from the estate: Mr Hall, Mr Storie, Mr Lawrence and Mr Weigall. Ropes were attached by the farm foreman and the forester foreman, and the couple took their places once again. Twenty men then picked up the ropes to pull the landau beneath the archway and up the hill to the main door of the Castle, accompanied by a lively march from the Newbury Town Band, which had been paid seven guineas for its services.

The Mayor of Newbury was in attendance and would
shortly present His Lordship with a wedding gift on behalf of the people of the local town: an album containing their good wishes on the occasion of his marriage, exquisitely illuminated in the style of a medieval manuscript. It was illustrated with views of Newbury Corn Exchange and Highclere itself, and bound in cream calf’s leather with the linked Carnarvon initial C’s stamped on the front.

Some of the estate tenants were in the gardens to watch proceedings. They had all been entertained in a marquee by the band and there had also been a tea party given for 330 of the local children. The event had been threatened by thunderstorms, but luckily the weather had cleared in time for both the tea party and the arrival of the bride and groom. It was almost the longest day of the year, and the sun was still strong.

As well as the fee for the band,
£
1 11s 6d was paid for the attendance of five constables and a donation of
£
2 was made to the Burghclere bell-ringers, who had been sending out peals of bells from the local church spire ever since the Earl and Countess disembarked from the train.

The red and blue flag proudly displaying the colours of the family’s coat of arms flew from the top of the tower, whose delicate turrets and stonework were interspersed with all manner of heraldic symbols and beasts, that seemed to survey the scene.

Drawing up at the heavy wooden door of the Castle, the Earl and his new Countess alighted once again from the carriage and were greeted by Mr Albert Streatfield, the house steward (a position more commonly referred to as that of butler) and Major James Rutherford (the agent who ran the estate) and his wife.

What must Almina have thought as she watched the men of Highclere labouring to haul her to her destination? What ran through her mind when she gazed upon this house as its new chatelaine? It was not her first sight of it. She had visited twice before, for the weekend, with her mother. But now she was the Countess of Carnarvon, expected to manage the running of the household and to perform her numerous duties. Everyone at Highclere, whether they worked above or below stairs, on the farm or in the kitchen, had a role to fulfil, and Almina was no different.

It must have felt exhilarating. Almina was an energetic and high-spirited girl, and marriage, motherhood and now service to the Carnarvon dynasty would have looked like a very agreeable destiny to most girls able to imagine themselves in her shoes. She was accustomed to living an indulged life, and had no reason to suspect that she would ever want for anything she desired. She was already very much in love with her new husband. But surely there must have been feelings of trepidation, too.

If she had been in any doubt beforehand, she needed only to glance at the press on the Saturday after her wedding to see that her life would henceforth be lived in public. Then, as now, the weddings of the aristocracy and the rich and famous were eagerly covered by the press. The ‘World of Women’ column in the
Penny Illustrated
paper carried a full-length portrait of Almina (although in a slip-up she was described as Miss Alice Wombwell in the caption) and described her gown in detail. Almina had passed from almost total obscurity to object of media scrutiny in a moment. With her new status came all sorts of pressures.

Almina wasn’t given very long to wonder what lay in
store for her. Lord Carnarvon spent the next few days taking his bride around the park and neighbouring villages to meet the local families, in order that Almina could begin to explore alone and become familiar with her new home. They went to Highclere Church for morning service on the Sunday after they were married. Sir Gilbert Scott had been at work here, as in Westminster. He’d designed and built the church some twenty years previously, at the request of Lord Carnarvon’s father, the 4th Earl. And then, business concluded, the couple left for the Continent and the second part of their honeymoon. It was a chance to get to know each other properly, in private, at last. They spent two weeks away before returning to Highclere, when normal life resumed. Except that, for Almina, nothing would ever be the same again.